


empty hopes like these

by rebelbexx



Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:09:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21864265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebelbexx/pseuds/rebelbexx
Summary: mrs coulter hates lord asriel. or maybe she doesn't not even a little bit not even at all
Relationships: Lord Asriel/Marisa Coulter
Comments: 2
Kudos: 44





	empty hopes like these

The first time Marisa Coulter meets Lord Asriel she hates him. It burns so brightly inside her it knocks the wind out of her. They’re in the middle of a party and he barely acknowledges her during their introduction and she’s furious. The men she meets at these dreadful, dull, glittering parties never draw such emotions from her, at most she has a lazy contempt for their vapid self-aggrandizing. 

They are drawn to her: her beauty, her wit, her unattainableness (for no one would dare cross her husband, such a high-ranking Magisterium member) but she is the most sparkling thing at these parties and they flock to her like moths in anbaric light. She is unused to being ignored by men, men who usually want to look at her body and have her laugh twinklingly at their jokes, but especially by men who go to her husband for funds. Do they not understand that it is she who controls the purse strings? Do they not see that she is important?

But Asriel. Asriel is arrogant, dismissive, and worst of all, _handsome._ She hates him. 

They’re seated next to each other at dinner. The room is full of champagne laughter and the tinkle of silver. This is the dance Marisa loves, the game of politics, of making people do what she wants them to do, of letting them think they have the upper hand. She twitches the fine linen napkin over the dress her husband insisted on her wearing – the one that shows her assets off just a little too well – she turns to him. She wants to make him pay a little for the rebuff earlier. She wants to play with her food. 

“I’m told you have interest in experimental theology.”

He sips his drink and barely looks at her.

Fine. She doesn’t let him see how much this bothers her, that would be unthinkable to let him know. She turns to her left and they spend the rest of the meal ignoring each other.

* * *

The second time they meet is at a garden party in the middle of a blazing heat wave. Edward Coulter had left the second they arrived, off to find gin and those important men who sit in dark rooms in the middle of summer and discuss the moral ruin of the world. He hadn’t even offered to get her a drink before he sprang off, another one those humiliating little reminders of her place that he so loved to employ against her. 

She walks into the sun, the linen of her dress billowing away from her body. It feels like the afternoon will drag on forever as she sees faces she knows and despises in the crowd. The women all talk behind her back, Edward Coulter’s much younger bride, she doesn’t even know how to run a house. She _does_ know, it’s just that she doesn’t care. She’s in the middle of finishing a book, a book too advanced for even her husband to understand, and yet they simper at her like _she’s_ the fool. 

Marisa finds shade against an ancient oak, old as time itself, wishing she had thought to grab a drink. She wants to send her monkey daemon but can’t, can’t draw attention to the fact that he can stray further from her than is normal, than is acceptable. Even her husband doesn’t know. It’s just another way she’s different, she’s apart. As if to agree, her daemon looks up at her but she pays him no mind. Not now, not in company. 

Asriel appears from the west, unwelcome and unwanted near the shade of her tree. His daemon is the most beautiful snow leopard Marisa has ever seen and she smothers an _unbelievable_ urge to reach out and touch her. Asriel notices her and she both wishes he’d go away and wants him desperately closer, wants to feel the way he would touch her. She thinks it would be with disdain. She hopes she’s wrong.

“You have no drink”

She wants to ignore him like he did her but mortifyingly, she’s answering before she can stop herself.

“I couldn’t bear the small talk.”

He surveys the crowd of people, all well born, all the right _sorts_ of people. “I would think you’d revel in it. It’s dreadful, though. Gin does make it better.”

“I can’t hear any longer about Charles Ellison’s latest scandal. It might kill me.”

He laughs, _laughs_ and Marisa feels tiny bubbles pop inside her, fizzy and bright. She hates him. 

She hates him.

“Be a gentleman then and get me a gin.”

He considers her, his eyes dark in the shade of the oak. He moves closer and Marisa is suddenly aware of the way the linen dress exposes her shape against the sun.

“I am no gentleman” and she thinks he might grab her, here in front of the whole world, but he walks away. 

Marisa lets her breath out slowly and realizes she doesn’t hate him at all.

* * *

The third time they meet, it’s at Oxford. Marisa has just finished a meeting her stupid husband had no knowledge of. Men think they’re so influential in politics but Marisa knows better. They just want to be flattered and told what good boys they are. It is so easy to manipulate them, and now, now she is closer than ever to a position within the Magisterium. 

She literally runs into Asriel as she turns the corner near Jordan college. She collides so fully with him that she feels the reverberations of his body _everywhere._ She knows the monkey is staring openly at his daemon and it humiliates her. She wants to say something to him but it would make it worse. Marisa rights herself before Asriel can notice, though she’s sure his daemon must have seen the monkey’s gaze.

“Watch where you’re going!”

He smirks lazily at her, a lion looking at his next meal. “Mrs. Coulter I didn’t think they allowed women in Jordon College.”

She straightens her skirt. “I’m not any woman.”

“No. No you’re not.” Then, “The Master tells me you’ve written a book. He seems quite taken with you.”

She feels rage and something else bubbling beneath the surface, emotions she tries so hard to control. She’s not that person anymore, she doesn’t let those feelings out. She takes a breath.

“Yes, well. That’s very kind of him. I’m taken with him too.”

Asriel cocks his head, as if he knows how much she detests the Master, as if he knows she’s smarter than that silly old fool and that if she were a man, she’d wield incredible influence.

“What does your husband think?”

“Think about what, Lord Asriel? That his wife is a scholar? He supports it.”

“Not many men would do so.”

“Lucky for me then, I’m not married to those men.”

“Oh, I think they’re the lucky ones Mrs. Coulter.”

The monkey bares his teeth and she can feel the answering rumble from his daemon down to her toes. Part of her is shocked at how deeply she can feel that daemons growl, how _intimate_ it is. 

The air is charged, a current between them that could power a city. She hates him. She wants to show him how much she hates him, slowly and with tremendous control as he begs beneath her.

“Would you care for a drink Mrs. Coulter? I believe I owe you a gin.”

His abrupt shift in apparent friendliness startles her but she doesn’t let him see that. 

She startles herself by agreeing.

They find themselves at a nearly empty pub, squashed against the back wall for no other reason than he claims it’s the best seat in the place. He’s inflamed as they argue about his Other Worlds theory, trying to convince her that there are a multitude of other worlds separated by a thin veil from their own.

She doesn’t tell him that she thinks he’s right, that she’s been working on her own theory regarding these worlds and the ways in which daemons work between them. She only sits back and pokes holes in his logic, uses her fierce intellect the way it was supposed to be used. They rile each other up, the more passionate he gets, the more she feeds on it, the more she needs him to keep going, to push her further, to make her alive.

They argue for hours, drinks long forgotten and the more he talks the more she sees and the more she sees the less she keeps her own mask in place. He seems enraptured by what she says, the way she argues, the way her mind works. He doesn’t seem to care about her forays into ruthless problem solving or zero-sum outcomes though he does push back hard on her Magisterium doctrine, that learned zealotry passed down from her mother and enforced by her husband. 

He doesn’t care about their teachings or the game of politics that infects every aspect of her life. He doesn’t get off on the chess moves needed to hold power, not like her, not when power is such a tenuous thing in a world not made for a woman.

“You don’t care about power because you’ve always had it! It means nothing to you.”

“Power is not something you wield! It is a choice.”

“Not for me. My choices are different than yours and it’s sheer arrogance to think otherwise.”

“That is weakness and you know it. I know you’re not a weak woman.”

“You don’t know anything about me.” Oh, but he does and Marisa knows it. She knows he can see the color high in her cheeks, the passion flowing from her. Her husband would never have stood for this display, would never have even let her get this far. Edward Coulter is not a man to be argued with, and Marisa knows this too. He is a man to manipulate, just like her other lovers, chosen for influence and power. Never for pleasure and certainly never for their ability to match wits with her. 

Asriel smiles that predatory smile, his face carved with knowledge in the low light of that dark back room in a deserted pub in Oxford. 

And suddenly she knows. She knows Asriel can see everything about her, her cruelness, her ambition, her drive, her heart. She knows and she hates him. Hates him more than she has ever hated anyone and he knows that too. 

He leans in, so close to her heated skin that she feels like she might burst, and whispers, “You’d like to think that, wouldn’t you?” 

She says nothing, unable to, rendered speechless by a man who alternately ignores her or inflames her, and it pisses her off. How dare he presume to know her heart, when she herself cannot see it? How dare he do _this_ to her, whatever this is? 

She slaps him. And the reverberation across her palm shoots straight to the heart of her, to that soft quivering place that no man had ever reached.

They stare at each other, both daemons poised to react, for the space of breath. Asriel smiles, a true deep smile that makes her stomach flip over. She hopes he doesn’t kiss her. She hopes he does.

He puts money on the table and stands, leaves her sitting like the woman she’s not.

“Until next time Mrs. Coulter.”

That night, alone in her bed, her daemon banished to the closet, Marisa Coulter cries out into her pillow as the hand she wishes was Asriel’s moves across her body.


End file.
